I love FreeBSD and I tried really hard to like PC-BSD but I’m sorry to say that I don’t. I like the concept of the BSD desktop but I feel its still a few years behind the Linux desktop in hardware support and you’re likely going to have more luck there.

However the PC-BSD people have done good work in making BSD more accessible to normal users which is impressive. PC-BSD has some very interesting ideas for the open source desktop like the PBI install system, I would like to see more Linux distributions do something similar to PBI or what Linux Mint does. For the most part I don’t think that not using the command line would be a problem since most tasks have graphical tools.

A few shortcomings aside, I really like PC-BSD 7.1. It’s free, easy to install, and offers a lot of value for any computer user that is willing to look beyond the usual operating system choices. There’s plenty of software available for download and, unlike certain Linux distributions, it’s incredibly easy to install or to remove from your system.

Real diversity in choice of operating systems is something that we should all value. As much as I like Linux why should the choice just come down to Windows or Linux? Or even Mac OS X? PC-BSD is offering users yet another alternative that’s free, secure, and very stable.

Ken Smith has announced the availability of the second release candidate for FreeBSD 7.2:

The second of the two planed release candidates for the 7.2-RELEASE cycle is now available. We believe, with the exception of the new bce(4) driver not working with lagg(4), all the major issues that have come up from the testing have been addressed. We will work with the vendor to get that issue addressed post-release.
At this point we know of no problems big enough to impact the dates for the rest of the release cycle which is here:

There is one known issue with 7.2-RC2. We switched from KDE3 to KDE4 and during my tests done before uploading the images, a problem with package dependencies for KDE4 was discovered. The kdemultimedia4 package has audio/lame as a runtime dependency but that package cannot be pre-built due to licensing issues. So the install of kdemultimedia4 fails if you choose to install kde4. The ports folks have been notified and will make the necessary adjustments before the final release.

The well-know bench marking website Phoronix has carried out a benchmark run between Kubuntu 9.04 and PC-BSD 7.1 (20/04/2009)

Earlier this month PC-BSD 7.1 was released, which is based upon the FreeBSD 7.1 stable release, but of course with the extra packages and changes that make PC-BSD an easier to use BSD-based desktop operating system. PC-BSD 7.1 ships with X.Org 7.4 and KDE 4.2.2 installed along with many other packages when using the x86 or x64 DVD installations. Though with the Phoronix Test Suite now having enhanced support for PC-BSD, we decided to see how well PC-BSD 7.1 performs against Kubuntu 9.04.

Both systems perform almost equally (only seconds of difference), but Kubuntu scores more points in this test than PC-BSD.

I’d say that this test is not altogether “fair” as different versions of GCC and X.org have been used. This could easily have quite an impact on the results.

It would be interesting to see if Phoronix did this test again later on this year when FreeBSD 8.0 has come out.

expected to become widespread as routers and network appliances deploy them, allowing wireless networks to be built and extended dynamically. Support for the standard will allow FreeBSD consumers to take advantage of this new technology.

As well as end-users, FreeBSD-based product vendors will benefit from access to mesh networking technology in building future versions of their products,

said Robert Watson, president of the FreeBSD Foundation.

I am thrilled to be bringing such an exciting and technically advanced feature to the FreeBSD operating system,

said FreeBSD Developer Rui Paulo. The project will be completed by July 2009.